


Some People Don't Believe in Heroes

by MYuzuki



Series: A Motley Little Crew of Dysfunction [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, because I suck at tags as always, if you guys have any suggestions for tags that apply to this I would welcome the help lol XD, some light swearing at a few points
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 08:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12105000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: [A companion ficlet to I Turn at Last to Paths That Lead Home.]Bruce is plenty busy with his own cases and workload, but a certain message from Tim about a corrupt politician's recent banking activity piques his curiosity. Why the sudden interest in a criminal who's already on their way to prison? And what does it have to do with the Red Hood?





	Some People Don't Believe in Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> So...this happened as a direct result of girlgamer's review comment about wanting to see Bruce putting together the pieces about why his kids are suddenly asking him to track down the banking info of some random corrupt politician and how he would react to finding out about the attempt on Jason's life. The idea pretty much made me flail with joy at all the great potential and this is the result. Enjoy!

Bruce doesn't notice the message from Tim right away. He's in the Batcave and deep into researching a weapons smuggling case; he wants to finish putting together this last batch of information so he can forward it over to Jim Gordon and proceed from there.

When he finally does notice the flashing icon indicating a new email, he frowns. Tim's supposed to be out on patrol in Chinatown right now, while Dick covers The Cauldron for Bruce since he's busy with the arms deal case, and no one else would be sending a message to that specific email address; the girls don't bother sending him emails lately, Alfred and Damian are upstairs and wouldn't send an email when they could just come down if they needed him, and Jason...

Well, Jason  _has_  the email address and could send Bruce messages if he wanted to, but since the last thing he'd said to Bruce had been something about lightning him on fire and drop-kicking him off a very tall skyscraper, Bruce is pretty sure it's not a message from his always-angry wayward son.

Curious, he opens it, sees that it's from Tim, and his frown deepens when he reads the words on the screen.

His third son wants him to get all the banking information for Gordon Lennox. Including his offshore accounts.

Bruce can't help but wonder why Tim is suddenly so interested in the funds of a corrupt politician who is currently in the process of standing trial for human trafficking. He hadn't seem particular interested when Lennox's take-down had been big news; why the sudden interest now?

He wants to go back to focusing on his smuggling case, but that niggling bit of curiosity won't go away.

He justifies it by reasoning that if his third son is asking for his help on something, it's probably pretty damn important; Tim's not really one to ask for help, not even when he  _does_ need it, so if he's gotten to the point where he's emailing Bruce asking for an assist...

Well, Bruce will be the first to admit that he's a pretty terrible father and probably not the best crime-fighting partner (he can be difficult to get along with, he  _knows_  that...he just can't seem to change enough to fix the issue) but he doesn't have it in him to deny assistance to one of his sons.

He'd do almost anything for any of them. Even Jason, though his second son doesn't believe him. (Not that Bruce blames him for the mistrust; he's failed him before, after all, both as Batman and as a father.)

So he closes the files on the arms dealer he'd been researching and pulls up the banking information for Gordon Lennox instead.

What he sees at first is perfectly ordinary bank statements given the circumstances; there are expensive attorneys being cut substantial checks fairly frequently (unsurprising since the man is on trial and hopefully about to go to prison for multiple decades), some automatic withdrawals and deposits for various run-of-the mill things, and nothing really jumps out at him right away.

He decides to poke around a little more, because Tim would hardly have asked him to track down Lennox's banking records just to see how much the man's paying his lawyers.

He finds it about twenty minutes later, hidden under miscellaneous charges in one of his decidedly more shady offshore accounts.

Tracking it down reveals that a payment had been made to a shell company for "Pest Elimination Services" and it seemed to have been finalized just within the last few days.

Bruce isn't sure he likes the sound of that; he figures digging into the matter a  _tiny_  bit more can't hurt. Tim would probably like as much information as possible anyway, right? Right. (He's not being an anxious paranoid father; he's  _not_.)

(...Okay, maybe he is.)

Half an hour later, he finishes wading through the false identities behind the shell company and discovers that they're an organization of assassins-for-hire. Nothing on the level of the League of Assassins, but nothing to sneeze at, either.

Their server security is complete and utter amateur work, though, so it's a matter of moments for Bruce to hack into their system (Barbara or Tim himself could have done it even quicker, but Bruce is determined to work out this puzzle on his own).

He smirks a bit to himself as he works, because getting past this group's security is almost too easy; honestly, if you're going to run a group of paid murderers, at least invest a bit of time and effort into securing your sensitive information. (He understands that they'd probably never anticipated  _Batman_  picking through the twelve shell companies they'd hidden themselves behind, but even so the negligence was astounding.)

The smile falls entirely off his face when he tracks down the job Lennox had requested of the group.

 _Kill Order: The Red Hood._  
_Number of operatives needed: 1_  
_Method: Any._  
_Time-frame: ASAP._

The file goes on to detail what little information the group had managed to compile on the Red Hood (really very little, and Bruce is oddly proud of Jason for somehow keeping himself off the grid while still being very much a presence in Gotham), but honestly Bruce is only skimming the information at this point, his mind too wrapped up in  _someone tried to kill my son,_ _ **again**_  to process much of anything else.

The only thing keeping him from a full on panic attack is the knowledge that whatever assassin had been sent couldn't  _possibly_  have succeeded. Jason is good. No, better than good, he's one of the best, for all that his skill is usually underestimated by most people, who sometimes assume he's all bark and no bite.

Jason is a fighter, and wouldn't go down easily if someone came after him with intent to kill. Wouldn't go down, period, and Bruce clings to that thought determinedly. After all, Tim wouldn't have messaged him just to get the financials of Jason's killer, he would have come to the Cave personally to deliver the news if Jason had truly been killed in action.

So, Jason must still be alive. But for Tim to be involved, even just peripherally, something had to have gone wrong. Jason isn't one to broadcast his troubles, not even ones involving attempts on his life, so for Tim to be in the loop means something's up.

And now that he's thinking about it, where are the  _rest_  of his kids? The communication lines have been suspiciously quiet for the last few hours; he knows that some nights are like that, no radio chatter between the siblings, but to go so long with no one at least tossing out a witty one-liner is...odd.

He considers calling Barbara, then decides against it. She monitors every single member of their family pretty much constantly, so if she hasn't alerted him to a problem then she's got a good reason. The most likely scenario is that Jason got wounded in the fight and someone found him in the aftermath; it hurts that they wouldn't contact Bruce for assistance, but it's also not exactly a surprise, given the current tensions between himself and Jason.

It also occurs to him that it's probable that his other kids are  _with_  Jason, if he's been injured. Dick would definitely be there, because he cares deeply about Jay and worries about him and certainly wouldn't leave his baby brother alone if he's hurt, and Tim's clearly already involved so it makes sense to assume that he's with them as well.

And now that Bruce is thinking about it, it's been a few hours since Damian came down to the Cave to pester him about going out on patrol. Which means that his youngest son has, in all likelihood, snuck out against orders and gotten himself embroiled in this drama as well.

And since the girls are never ones to miss out on anything, it's probably safe to assume that they're with their brothers.

Bruce starts to feel a headache coming on.

He reaches into his utility belt, pulls out a small pill-case, and downs two aspirin before turning back to his computer screen.

As long as his children are all safe, he might as well focus his attention on this Lennox bastard.

It takes some doing, but he manages to access the courthouse computers and review the current information on the disgraced delegate's case.

It's...not looking so good. Despite the overwhelming evidence stacked in the prosecutor's favor, it looks like there's a very high chance of Lennox getting out of a serious prison sentence; it seems as if the combination of Lennox's checkbook and friends in high places might be enough to get him cut loose, on the slim justification of most of the evidence against him being circumstantial.

Bruce is not at all thrilled with the possibility of a human trafficker who'd  _just put out a hit on his son_  walking free. Truth be told, he's feeling...pretty pissed off, actually.

It's the work of a moment to check the security schedules for the facility where Lennox is being held for the duration of his trial. It takes him a little longer to set up a timed release for the morning shift change on Lennox's door specifically, and he feels a brief pang of guilt about it, but he finishes that task pretty easily, too.

The guilt over arranging a temporary criminal breakout is pretty easy to quash when he reminds himself that Lennox is going to be returned right back to his containment cell once Bruce is finished with him. As for what he's going to  _do_  to Lennox, well...

He's not going to kill him, because there's no coming back once he starts down that path, but this piece of scum had tried to arrange Jason's death. And Bruce can't stand to lose his son  _again_ , even if they spend at least eight-five percent of their time together fighting and pouring salt in each other's emotional wounds.

Jason is still his son, and Bruce loves him, even now. The angry man he sees these days still has the old Jason inside of him; Bruce has caught glimpses of it, now and again when Jason doesn't notice him looking. It's there in the way he looks out for the downtrodden in the harder parts of the city, the way he prioritizes the safety of children above anything else, the way he'll drop whatever he's doing to provide backup for another member of their family even though he claims to hate all of them.

Jason is still Jason, underneath all the bitterness and gunpowder and lingering Lazarus taint, and Bruce will  _never_  not love his son. As long as his heart is still beating in his chest, he'll love all of his children, no matter what.

So yeah, the guilt about what's he's planning for Lennox doesn't linger very long at all.

Once he triple checks to make sure that the program for the automatic release on Lennox's cell is complete and ready to go, he leaves for the facility.

Everything goes exactly as planned. Lennox, being an idiot, seizes the freedom that had been dangled in front of his nose, and flees the facility.

He runs straight into Batman, who drops down from an adjacent building and proceeds to beat the ever-loving hell out of him. Then he grabs the man by the collar and drags him over to the security guards who'd been in pursuit before his, ahem,  _timely arrival_.

"I trust that this attempt to escape custody will be brought up at his trial?" Batman asks the guards, though it's clear from his tone of voice that it's not  _really_  a question. "And since you all witnessed it first-hand, there's nothing to prevent him from being convicted of this crime at least."

"Absolutely, sir," one the guards replies. "We'll put in our statements right away." He slants a disgusted look down at the now barely-recognizable Lennox. "We were starting get a bit nervous, sir," he admits. "About this bastard walking after what he did."

"It doesn't seem like he'll be walking anywhere anytime soon," is Batman's dust-dry response.

(And it's the literal truth. Bruce had broken both of Lennox's legs; he won't be walking anywhere at all for at least ten weeks. And with this latest bit of drama, he'll be in jail or prison for at least a handful of years. It's not an ideal resolution, but it could have been much, much worse.)

He fires off his grapple gun, leaving the stunned guards and their unconscious prisoner behind him in the pale light of the rising sun.

At first he plans to go back home, to the Cave and the Manor.

But somehow he finds himself swinging through the city in the opposite direction, back towards the grittier and grimier parts of the city. He ends up roaming the Crime Alley and Park Row rooftops until he spots Stephanie's motorcycle parked outside a dilapidated apartment building.

He crouches down on the roof of the building across the street, and can't hold back the tiny smile that springs onto his face when he locates a window showing inside Jason's safe house.

Instead of shouting and fighting and any of the typical behavior he's become regretfully accustomed to seeing between his children, he sees them huddled together on and around a faded and battered couch, with Jason in the center and the others crowded around him, as if to insulate him from any and all potential threats.

He figures that maybe they're not all so beyond hope, if moments like this can still happen.


End file.
